Where Liberalism Is Alive and Well!

Day: January 26, 2010

I’ve been accused of being an all sorts of things because I support President Obama, but in an interview with Diane Sawyer he reminded me why I support him so much. Look at this exchange with Sawyer, the whole transcript is here.

SAWYER: Ever in the middle of all that’s coming did you think maybe one term is enough?

OBAMA: You know, I — I would say that when I — the one thing I’m clear about is that I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president. And I — and I believe that.

You know, there’s a tendency in Washington to think that our job description of elected officials is to get re-elected. That’s not our job description. Our job description is to solve problems and to help people. And, you know, that’s not just the view of elected officials themselves. That’s also the filter through which the media reads things. And the reason I can say this with confidence is I’ve gone through this before. I went through this through the campaign.

When your poll numbers drop, you’re an idiot. When your poll numbers are high, you’re a genius. If my poll numbers are low, then I’m cool and cerebral and cold and detached. If my poll numbers are high, well, he’s calm and reasoned.

So that’s — that’s the filter through which a lot of this stuff is interpreted. But…

SAWYER: Do you think there’s a lot of bed wetting, as David Plouffe said?

OBAMA:I do think that people are always thinking in the cable news cycle, and whatever appears that given day is how people view the world. That is not how I look at things. You know, I went to Iowa — I went to Ohio last week on Friday. And I went to a company that the family had owned for years — third generation. They make machine tools.

And you go and you talk to the workers there and you talk to the owners and then you go to the diner and you’re meeting with people and talk to them. You know, they are not interested in whether Democrats are scoring points on Republicans or vice versa. What they’re interested in is, you know, I can’t get a loan from my bank right now. I’m trying to save for my kid’s college education. You know, I’m worried that my 401(k), although it’s bounced back a little bit, still doesn’t leave me enough for retirement.

Those are the things that people talk to me about. And so that’s what I spend a lot of my time thinking about.

As you may have noticed if you’ve read any of my previous posts, I think the media is lazy, stupid, reactionary, sensational, style over substance, process over policies…..every thing is filtered through polls, the horse race or the latest outrage. Any politician can get on cable by being outraged about something, whether they are sincere or not, whether they need a boost in the polls or not, whether they are lying or not. The media eats that shit up and then craps it back out for us wrapped in a poll. Arghhh, don’t get me started……oh wait, I started it myself. Oops. :)